Anyone who’s spent a few minutes on Zoom (by now, who hasn’t?) must have intuitively grasped that remote meetings via videoconferencing come with distinct textures and dynamics compared to in-person conversations. But what is it that underpins these differences? Over at Google’s The Keyword blog, UX Researcher Zachary Yorke explores the scientific explanations for the way our face-to-face communication changes as soon as it switches from colocated to distributed.
Even minuscule details, like milliseconds in audio lag, can make a Zoom call feel radically different from a hallway chat:
When the sound from someone’s mouth doesn’t reach your ears until a half second later, you notice. That’s because we’re ingrained to avoid talking at the same time while minimizing silence between turns. A delay of five-tenths of a second (500 ms)—whether from laggy audio or fumbling for the unmute button—is more than double what we’re used to in-person. These delays mess with the fundamental turn-taking mechanics of our conversations.
